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If you’ve read even a few chapters of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, it’s probably pretty clear that Mark Twain was violently against slavery and racism. But there’s more to his second theme than simple criticism. Click on Recap 7 to find out what Twain was really saying about these evils.

Video Transcription:

By the time Mark Twain was writing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the Civil War was over and slavery had been abolished. But the conditions for blacks in this country still had a looooong way to go. That’s why Twain tackled racism and slavery in this novel. Let’s check them out, courtesy theme number two.

Slavery and racism lead to moral confusion and corruption.

That’s the nice uplifting theme that Twain, the social commentator, chose to tackle in Huck Finn.

So how did he do it?

Example 1: Huck. Even though Huck wants to help Jim escape, he struggles with this decision. Like in Chapter 16, when he almost turns Jim in—and then doesn’t. It’s an episode characterized by a swirl of moral confusion. Huck can’t believe that he’s depriving someone of their “property” by helping Jim escape, but he knows he’d feel worse if he turned Jim in. Right seems wrong and wrong seems right. And though Huck goes with his conscience, it all seems pretty topsy-turvy.

Here’s the second example: It’s the irony that the “good guys” in this story—people like Miss Watson and Sally Phelps—are still oblivious to the evils of enslaving other human beings. They’re set up as good people … and yet they don’t have any qualms about separating Jim from his family.

Twain’s answer to all of this, of course, was a world without slavery and racism—a world that can exist only when people start thinking for themselves.